Professional Documents
Culture Documents
MENTAL RAY
3ds Max
software.
2007 Electric Gobo / Karcher,
www.electricgobo.com
4
Mental ray
Combustion
(release
4), Autodesk
Toxik
, or other software.
To render an image without exposure control:
1. Set the Exposure Control to Logarithmic and clear the
following check boxes:
2. Enable 32-bit rendering with mental ray:
Save to a PIC or EXR file (both support 32-bit data). To
select specific HDR values, right-click the frame buffer.
Materials, Colors, and Reflectance
Understanding Reflectance
No matter which type of material you use, the amount of
light bounced back to the scene has a direct relation with
the materials color. For example, a white wall reflects more
light than a dark gray wall. A dark gray wall in sunlight
reflects more light than a white wall in a dim room. This is
the behavior of diffuse reflectance, not to be confused with
glossiness (for glossy or matte finishes). All indirect light
bounces off surfaces in a diffuse (or lambertian) manner in
all directions. In contrast, directed bouncing light, such as
the pattern of a mirror in sunlight, is called caustic reflection,
and is rarely needed in for architectural renderings.
Understanding Diffuse
Reflectance
A common mistake is using a
color that looks good onscreen
(in the color picker or the materi-
al preview). These colors are
usually too bright for the global
illumination renderer, resulting in
overly saturated images that are incorrect from a physics
point of view. To get a better feel for colors in images, try
using the Pick Color tool on a digital photo. Youll find that
almost every color is less saturated in an image than in the
minds eye.
Typically, a white wall would not reflect more than about 85
percent of the light it receives. Therefore, the RGB color
should not be more than 0.85, 0.85, 0.85 (float colors) or
217, 217, 217 (integer colors).
To select the desired color, select the tint (Hue) of your
material and then rely on the V value, which usually close-
ly matches the reflectance of your material.
2007 Electric Gobo / Karcher, www.electricgobo.com
The image on the left is exposed toward the inside of the room, and the image on
the right is exposed toward the outer courtyard. Both are correct; the direction of the
exposure is up to you.
16
Mental ray
Photoshop
Excel